I don't want to be a negative pigeon among here (RE collective) but I can see lots of probs with a collective. I can see that a collective can be tempting at the face of it. But I don't think it's as easy and as sweet as it seems and would be full of pitfalls which I think could cause a lot of discord. It's a nice fluffy idea, which I too like in principal (and would consider), but it's also a business because writing is a business. We want to publish books which sell. We want to make money from our books. It would depend on what exactly the collective is, i.e. a collective publishing company, or a collective bookshop, or...?
The biggest issue is the money (isn't it always?). I'm assuming everyone would invest into a pot (in other words everyone pays for everyone to be published - everyone in the collective will be published). That means the royalties would have to be shared, otherwise those who put money in won't get anything out until THEIR book is published at some point down the line (maybe 3 years later when it's their turn. Not sure I'd want to wait). It would become very unfair to those who are A) slow at writing, and B) those who's books don't sell.
As for the investment into the collective. Marketing is a pot with no bottom. The investments into the collective would need to be more than £10 each per year because each book would need the SAME amount of money to be marketed, and even £100 per book isn't much to get it out there. The group would have to publish all books, or else it would be unfair to the writer who joins and give money into the pot. So, basically, each member would have to put the amount of money in that they would for their own book anyway.
The other problem would come from the amount of members in the collective. I'm assuming authors would share the royalties. How many authors would belong to a collective? Anything more than 10 and the proceeds of the books would be watered down. 10 members means 10% of the royalties / profit each. 100 members and we all get 1 % of our investment. That's 1% of OUR OWN books. Ok, so the percentage of one's own book could be set higher, but now it becomes an accounting headache. The money we put in would be an investment into a business; the business of our books. Books would have to sell at huge volumes for us to actually make money out of it.
If you now put it on Kickstarter, the people who invest (readers presumably) will want something back for it which will come out of the profits. They may pledge a tenner, a hundred. What would they get for that? Free books worth their pledge presumably. So basically the collective has an initial cash injection but we give them the money back (or am I misunderstanding Kickstarter?).
When I finished my first book, I was full of optimism. It's the best thing ever, right, I want it out there. I could easily have joined a collective, put money in and ... When I look at my book now, I realise it is total SH*TE and will never sell, no matter how much editing anyone does. Now, if I were new to a collective I would expect it to be published because I've put money in. But would the rest of the group want to do the marketing for it and to essentially give their money towards it? If we don't love something, it's hard to market it. That's why agents say they "didn't love the book enough to champion it". There would be folk who will not want to put my rubbish book onto their social media, nor put effort into writing me a blog post about it for a blog tour they're doing. Just ask yourself: would you honestly spend several hours of work into marketing something you really don't like? Or would you think "I'll sit this one out"? Would you mention/recommend it during your own book tour? What if that book is highly controversial, a story about something extremely wrong? That author might already be a member of the collective and has only just written it. Now what? Who would decide, then tell that author, no thanks? But they've paid their membership. It can be difficult to make decisions among 3 or 4 people, but a collective might never get anything done.
Also by marketing others, we now give ourselves a load more work. Does everyone have the time to help market everyone else's book? 50 members means 50 marketing sessions per member. That's a lot of time one would have to spend along a day job, taking time away from writing. Would the returns justify it? Soon marketing of all those books would need outsourcing to someone who just does that, meaning the costs go up and the profits get squeezed.
I have a mini-collective with
@Jonny in that we have co-written 2 books and are about to finish our 3rd. Our 2 books are self-published on amazon. We share the royalties, so the X percent the zon gives us (can't remember the number) is now halved. Our collective a deux works because we're friends and we trust each other. But that's the thing: trust. We both have access to our KDP account. We can BOTH see the sales. We had to list a bank account to receive the royalties. We listed mine. When we get our quarterly payments (worthy of retirement in the Swiss Alps), the money goes into MY account. I then immediately transfer the money to him. He has to trust me to do it ASAP. If I wasn't as efficient as I am, he could potentially wait three years before he gets his £1.75 or whatever it is after doing a lot of nagging. In a group the person in charge of the money would have to do several money transfers to many people (not a prob but a hassle and potentially another headache when the tax man looks). If now that was across the continents you have to start doing international money transfers. It's all very do-able of course, but potentially a pain in the posterior.
In a group there will always be some who do sod all and yet expect to receive everything. It's nice idea to all work together happily, but it won't be like that when it's a bigger group. It's just humanity. A collective could suddenly get a very toxic place and someone would have to leave. Would they now they get the money back? Do they still get royalties of the books they've previously invested in?
We all know that some books will never sell. Just because it's self-published doesn't mean it will sell. A book/author might not be up to it. But what if that author wants to be in the collective? It would need a 'vetting' (wrong word) process. And now someone needs to decide. If that happens on here, a member here would be rejected for their book. Is that the spirit of Litopia? I'm not sure it is. I might write a book and the rest of Litopia collective would now have to tell me they don't think it's good enough. It now becomes elitist.
People could potentially put money / work in and get nothing for it.
I'm not against a collective as such. I would do it with select few people. But I think it can only work if it's a group of abs max 5 people who totally trust each other and who are at the same stage in their writing life. A few friends starting a publishing company is fine and great and I would. But it would have to turn into a "traditional" publishing company eventually over which only those friends have control.